Abstract
Suicides hurt families and the US economy with an annual cost of $69 billion. However, little is known about what determined suicide rates in the past. This is likely due to the lack of consistent data prior to the 20th century. In this article, I propose using newspaper suicide mentions for the period 1840–1910 as a proxy measure for suicide and perform several validation exercises. I show that the stylized facts like suicides drop during wars holds for suicide mentions. I also validate the newspaper suicide mentions against sparse suicide mortality data and a novel valence measure. This new measure can be used to assess the relationship between suicides and numerous policy changes happening in the 19th century that previously could not be explored. It thus offers a new research avenue for quantitative historical analyses, which can inform current policy via novel historical insights.
Highlights
Suicides are tragic events for witnesses, affected family, friends and for society in general
I offer a proxy measure for the state-year suicide rate by US state based on a large newspaper archive run by the Library of Congress
This paper provides evidence that suicide mentions are a feasible proxy for the suicide rate providing the first insight into suicide trends prior to 1900
Summary
Suicides are tragic events for witnesses, affected family, friends and for society in general. In order to understand the determinants of suicide, including studying the (un)intended consequences of past policies, data on suicides is necessary. Currently there is only one data source for US suicides prior to 1900—the mortality schedules. Mortality schedules were parts of the census that asked for people who died the year before the census and took place in 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, and 1885. The 1885 mortality schedules were part of some state censuses. States and territories are usually only covered in these mortality schedules once they have come under U.S sovereignty or jurisdiction. This explains why many current states are not included in the data.. This explains why many current states are not included in the data. not all mortality schedules are digitized
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